The campaign began in earnest during the first days of August. Trying to relax
at the cabin he had built on the Rapidan River in Virginia, Hoover could not
get his mind off of Roosevelt. As Ted Joslin relates in the first document in this
chapter, Hoover was angered by Roosevelt's casual use of the truth. Hoover
was determined to respond to every misstatement and he marshaled his troops
for the attack!

The campaign itself was a brutal slugfest of attack and counterattack. For the
most part, the two candidates crisscrossed the country delivering speeches, many
of which were broadcast on radio. With his rich baritone voice, Roosevelt
sounded confident that he could solve the country's problems. Hoover, on the
other hand, spoke in a flat, nervous, monotone, which gave his listeners the
impression that he was under siege. Radio played a big part in the election of 1932.

Perhaps the most ironical attack on Herbert Hoover came in Roosevelt's
speech in Sioux City, Iowa, on September 29. It was in that speech that Roosevelt attacked Hoover for driving up the federal deficit! Roosevelt would later
discover that controlling the federal budget was not as easy as it seemed from
his vantage point in Albany, New York.

In later speeches Roosevelt effectively attacked Hoover as the man responsible for the depression and the man who refused to respond to this economic
collapse. Neither charge was true, but the public wanted someone to blame for

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